NIDRA POLLER:Jihad runs the Boston Marathon
[the article appeared in the print edition of DI last week… website is temporarily blocked]
Tamerlan Tsarnaev is dead, Dzhokhar is wounded and imprisoned, Bostonians cheered like baseball fans… The bad guys are caught, but the mujahidin escaped in a cloud of anecdotal details, hapless or deliberate misconceptions, and a blackout on the ways and means of global jihad.
In that fateful week my choice of media was limited: CNN for heat of the action coverage, French TV for the local slant, print and online media for real information. As images of the finish line explosions revolved on a nickelodeon screen, “experts” speculated on the white/right wing likely suspects. Even after the telltale pressure cooker bombs were discovered, they were still explaining why a tea partying angry gun-lover would make a statement against Patriot’s Day, gun control, and the government, precisely four days before the anniversary of McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing.
It was the middle of the night in the U.S. but Friday morning in France when news broke of the murder of the MIT policeman. I followed events as they unfolded: the shootout at Watertown, the dawning realization that the Tsarnaev brothers were making their last stand, the death of suspect N° 1 and the hunt for suspect N°2. As the day went on, members of the broadly extended Tsarnaev family emerged like sitcom characters, with their accents, gestures, family secrets, and European depth, facing silly reporters. “How do you feel… What did you think… What would you say…? Team pals, school buddies, sparring partners and next door neighbors expressed disbelief. These were regular guys, Americans like us. Terrorists? Religious fanatics? No way man, they were like I mean you know…diversity.
Flattering civilian images of the killers filled the screen, punctuated by brief flashes of them standing heartless in the crowd just before they set off the bombs that killed three, maimed dozens, and injured hundreds. In one image you see an unsuspecting policeman walking right past them.
The first blast of confusion –the Timothy McVeigh hypothesis—was followed by a twist: the human interest angle shifted from the bereaved and the mutilated victims to the perpetrators. Okay, they weren’t NRA fanatics, but they could have been. Yes, these Tsarnaev brothers are Muslim but it has nothing to do with Islam. True, they set off bombs that blew off the legs of people watching the marathon, but they were sportsmen themselves. They might have gone on being regular guys if not for… who knows? Yes, they came to the United States on the (essentially Muslim) refugee resettlement program but you shouldn’t generalize.
The Boston Marathon bombing invites comparison with the killing spree of Mohamed Merah in Toulouse and Montauban last year. There, too, the perpetrator of choice was a right wing gun slinger dressed in black. Domestic intelligence services let Mohamed Merah out of their sights just when he returned from an extended visit to jihad tourist havens; the FBI and CIA looked the other way when Tamerlane Tsarnaev, already flagged by Russian secret services, spent six months in Dagestan and thereabouts. Investigators missed clues linking Merah to the assassination of a serviceman on March 11th, failed to link that attack to the shooting of three more servicemen on the 15th, and were still bungling when he went on to execute, Nazi style, a young father and three children at a Jewish day school on the 19th. Like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Mohamed Merah was under the influence of an older brother, Abdelkader, known to be a member of a Salafist group. Long before the Merah boys were “radicalized” their mother had nursed them on anti-Semitism.
Ecumenical services were held to honor Merah’s Muslim, Catholic, and Jewish victims. Muslim leaders warned of imminent backlash, voices rose to explain that Merah had been “radicalized,” his crimes had nothing to do with Islam. Friends, family, and neighbors swore he was just a small time banlieue delinquent, some claimed he’d been framed, Merah’s lawyer copped a plea: the young man wanted to serve his country but the Army wouldn’t take him. Tamerlan’s friends—in the ‘hood and in the NY Times— whined over his exclusion from the Golden Gloves championship just because he wasn’t a US citizen.
What is this “radicalization” that has nothing to do with Islam? Tamerlan’s aunt in Toronto said he started praying 5 times a day and what could be wrong with that, it’s better than taking drugs. (Now he is a suspect in the slaughter of his “best friend” and two Jewish guys found with their throats slit nearly to decapitation, sprinkled with marijuana, on September 12, 2011, the day after Dzhokhar was sworn in as a US citizen.) While evidence of a tangled web of typical jihad connections is pouring into print and online media, the story fades from the screen with a sigh of relief: they don’t belong to any organization. It’s a street corner operation, not a multinational.
Mohamed Merah, in some quarters, is a hero; his exploit provoked a vertiginous spike in attacks against Jews in France. At the same time, public opinion has gone sour on Islam, jihad has become a household word, and anti-terrorist laws have been tightened so that aspiring warriors can be arrested before they go into action.
By treating Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a criminal instead of an enemy soldier the U.S. government not only gives him rights he does not deserve, it masks the connection between the Boston Marathon bombing and the global war waged against us. These slapdash operations are directed by clearly identifiable masterminds. Islam harbors genocidal intentions that can mature in a wide variety of individuals and circumstances. Killers like the Tsarnaev brothers swim at ease in the diversity pool, indistinguishable from Muslims who don’t intend to take up arms, but persist in hiding the truth about the jihad imperative. Their condemnation of violence is misleading and misdirected. Instead of telling us that these atrocities have nothing to do with Islam, they have to confront its inherent genocidal impulses. If Islam cannot reject jihad, decent Muslims have to reject Islam … or be rejected by nations that don’t want to be soft targets anymore.
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